This is pretty dry and slow going, but worth watching. The urgency of our climate situation is pressing beyond anything we have faced before. As I sit through a sixth straight 70 degree plus January day in the Bay Area, hard to ignore. What I find heartening, is this dude is Obama's main man on science, sucha welcome change after 8 years of anti-science...

I knew one of the flight 93 victims and his mother pretty well. She went down to Guantanimo recently. She wants them to serve life in prison, rather than execution and the martyrdom they seek. Life in Soledad amongst the gangsters and common criminals would be horrible for them, so that is where they should go.

Of course, one could argue that dealing with 72 virgins might be even worse.

I forgot to bring this up, but one thing I really liked about Obama's Inauguration speech was when he brought up that EVERYONE had to do their part in remaking America. It's not just the government or the companies or etc, but it's the people of this country included that need to step up. Because if anyone is going to bring this country back to a respectable economic stability, it's the citizens here in America.

xbay wrote:I forgot to bring this up, but one thing I really liked about Obama's Inauguration speech was when he brought up that EVERYONE had to do their part in remaking America. It's not just the government or the companies or etc, but it's the people of this country included that need to step up. Because if anyone is going to bring this country back to a respectable economic stability, it's the citizens here in America.

YEP, and also to reverse that, he also blamed everyone too, ... which is true. As much as the American public and media wants to put 100% blame on banks, politicians, and wall street, a high percentage of american citizins chose to be irresponsible and buy beyond their means. that means getting loans and buying houses/cars they no they couldn't afford, doing their homework in the first place to see if they can afford it. I didn't vote for Obama, but im rooting for him and this country to succeed and be the great country we can be.

xbay wrote:I forgot to bring this up, but one thing I really liked about Obama's Inauguration speech was when he brought up that EVERYONE had to do their part in remaking America. It's not just the government or the companies or etc, but it's the people of this country included that need to step up. Because if anyone is going to bring this country back to a respectable economic stability, it's the citizens here in America.

YEP, and also to reverse that, he also blamed everyone too, ... which is true. As much as the American public and media wants to put 100% blame on banks, politicians, and wall street, a high percentage of american citizins chose to be irresponsible and buy beyond their means. that means getting loans and buying houses/cars they no they couldn't afford, doing their homework in the first place to see if they can afford it. I didn't vote for Obama, but im rooting for him and this country to succeed and be the great country we can be.

In the end, the loan lands on the homeowner so they should be educated on what they are getting into. Unfortunately many are either undereducated, can't do simple math, or were so desperate to own a home that they listened to the mortgage broker's hard sell. The third one is probably the majority of the cases.

We just got preapproved for a mortgage that I think is dangerously high considering our incomes, the economic climate, and the price of homes. If I made over a million a year, I wouldn't want to take out a loan that big... Kind of scary that they are still doing that huh? even in the current economic crisis...

If you add a level of desperation with a hard sell by the agent, and I can easily see things getting out of hand. A lot of foreclosures were because of ARM loans. ARMs are just an outright irresponsible form of lending, especially in the case of private home ownership. Banks played extremely loose and free with these loans in the last decade and it caught up with them. Things had to come back down to earth. Simple fact is that most people cannot afford a 600k home, and most homes on the market at that rate (at least in SF) are no where near worth that anyway.

I'm for bailing out individual homeowners/families deemed responsible enough to carry on with a reasonable mortgage payment. I don't know how that looks, but most people just want to work and pay their bills and we should find a way to help them to continue to do that.

I think every kid in the US, really everywhere, should have to take a course in what I will call Personal Economics. We all should have been taught about credit and savings, the real cost of things, loans, mortgages, retirement plans.

They would forget the details of course, but they would always know that they have to pay attention and that being fiscally irresponsible has consequences.

Still, a lot of people would have gotten sucked into the housing bubble when you could buy a house and make $50K before you made one payment.